SiRF unveils development platform for location services

Today in San Francisco SiRF unveils SiRFstudio, a location services enabling platform that can simplify and speed the development and deployment of location-aware applications across a broad range of mobile devices.

“Yesterday the bottleneck of the market was hardware with the lack of GPS-enabled devices, today and even more tomorrow it will be software” said Kanwar Chadha, founder and vice president of marketing at SiRF, to GPS Business News. This is the reason why SiRF, mainly known for being a GPS semiconductor manufacturer, has developed this software platform. Chadha adds: “Many in the LBS industry have been searching for the ‘killer app’ that will ignite consumer interest in LBS applications, but we have to look at location as a “killer enabler” that would impact all our applications and content,” said Chadha. So far in-car navigation has been the driver of the consumer GPS market but for Chadha navigation is only one of the applications of GPS. SiRF believes location will become pervasive and get integrated into applications people use the most on a mobile device: calendar, agenda, camera, to do list, etc. For Chadha SiRFstudio holds the promise of creating a true “locative experience” for users by making location an intrinsic and useful part of every mobile device, combining with and enhancing the native applications.

Faster time to market on multiple devices
To remove the software bottlenecks, SiRFstudio offers LBS developers a set of tools to develop their applications faster and port them to multiple devices. The platform is comprised of both client and server components. The SiRFstudio thin client resides on the mobile device and provides developer-facing APIs for the rapid development and integration of location-enabled applications. OEMs and ODMs can employ these APIs to location-enable their native applications, while third-party developers can employ them to create downloadable and browsable LBS applications as well as widgets. These open, common APIs will extend across all major device operating platforms, including Java, Windows, Linux and Symbian, and are compliant with all major standards, including JSR-179, Open LS, OMA MLP and SUPL and support the Web2.0 Widget environment, including Mobile Ajax and the JavaScript runtime.

SiRFstudio Server has a multi-protocol gateway that receives requests for location data from the SiRFstudio client over any available wireless link and delivers the best available location data back to it. SiRFstudio Server interfaces with most of the major geospatial data platforms worldwide, including AutoDesk, ESRI, Webraska, Navitime, Microsoft, DeCarta, Telmap, Maporama, Tele Atlas and Navteq, among others.

The actual data source is transparent to the application, and can be switched dynamically based on the mobile device’s location to provide the best possible GIS data and true GMS roaming. This enables applications developed in one local region to be deployed worldwide and SiRFstudio-enabled handsets manufactured in one local region to be used worldwide with the consistent location experience.

SiRFstudio Server’s location intelligence capabilities support peer-to-peer location to communicate user location with others, geo-annotation to create location-based user content, geo-publishing for location-based RSS and real-time feeds and a geo-agent for event-driven alerts based on time, location, speed, heading or motion.

Additionally for wireless operators the SiRFstudio Server vending machine interface provides a turn-key solution for both on-deck and off-deck content distribution. SiRF also provides within its ecosystem marketing tools and support for developers. “A lot of innovation in the LBS space is coming from small companies or even individual developers, but these organizations don’t have access to wireless operators; we want to promote their contents and innovations”, said Chadha. With SiRFstudio Chadha expects to unlock this problem enabling them to develop faster, port easily their application to a large number of platforms and get visibility from wireless operators and handset manufacturers.

Tomorrow location will be more and more pervasive on mobile devices and with this platform SiRF also expects to be everywhere.